* Beating beat-up Minnesota at home Tuesday night to get their first home victory since Jan. 30 is one thing.

Winning at San Antonio tonight to put together their first winning streak since Jan. 23-24 is quite another.

The Suns are not good at much but they are even lousier in back-to-back situations this season. Other than playing a fourth road game in five nights, this might be the worse-case scenario to come off an overtime game and travel to the best team in the league that has been resting at home since winning easily in Phoenix on Sunday.

San Antonio sat out Tony Parker and still cruised Sunday for most of the game to beat Phoenix for a sixth consecutive time. The Spurs led by as much as 21 points with the Suns shooting 37 percent and barely scoring away from the rim. In their last visit to San Antonio on Jan. 26, the Suns took a one-point lead to the fourth quarter before losing 108-99 with 31 from Parker, who is expected to return to action tonight and shredded Phoenix for 31 points and seven assists in the first meeting. San Antonio is 22-2 at home and the Suns are 2-11 in the second games of back-to-back sets.

Since the Suns last won consecutive games to move to 11-15, they have gone 8-24 (.250).

“The goal is to continue to get better every game and we won’t stop working until we do,” Suns interim head coach Lindsey Hunter said.

*Since the arrival of his twin brother Marcus, Suns power forward Markieff Morris has made 14 of 29 shots (48.3 percent) and averaged 11.3 points and 5.7 rebounds per game. Previously, Morris was shooting 39.4 percent and averaging 7.3 points and 4.3 rebounds. However, his foul-prone ways also have returned. Markieff fouled out of consecutive games Sunday (in 17 minutes) and Tuesday (in 32 minutes).

His final foul Tuesday night was nearly costly because it was a transition three-point play against Dante Cunningham, who previously had gone one for seven in the game. The play gave Minnesota the lead with 1:22 to go and followed two Morris turnovers – one where it took Goran Dragic too long to locate Morris posting up J.J. Barea and one where Cunningham stripped him.

Prior to that, Morris had come up with a big block moments earlier on Nikola Pekovic inside and had been active throughout the game, getting three dunks by running the floor, including a half-court alleyoop from Kendall Marshall.

* The Suns were fortunate to pull out that game Tuesday night for more than blowing an 18-point lead or avoiding an Alexey Shved game-winning layup with P.J. Tucker’s glancing block.

The Suns went three minutes of clutch time in regulation without scoring and Ricky Rubio missed a free throw that could have put the Timberwolves ahead by three with 25 seconds to go. Needing just a two to tie, assistant coach Igor Kokoskov drew up the pick-and-roll play that got Marcin Gortat the tying layup with 13.6 seconds to go and Rubio airballed a game-winning jumper at the regulation buzzer.

“We are talking together,” Dragic said of himself and Gortat. “We sat down and I told him what I wanted him to do. It’s a different situation right now then when he had Steve Nash and Channing on the floor. Channing spreads the floor and it’s a lot of space in the middle of the paint. Right now we don’t have it. I told him that I am going to look for him. If he is open, I am going to pass. I try to pass to everyone who is open.”

In their first head-to-head start, neither Rubio (two for 12) or Dragic (four for 14) shot the ball well. Rubio had more assists than Dragic (10 to seven) but also twice the turnovers (six to three). Rubio was a sneaky defender with four steals, giving him a NBA-best 18 since the All-Star break, while Dragic went from 12 steals in the past four games to none Tuesday night.

* The Suns’ win Tuesday night moved them from the third worst record in the league to tied for the fourth worst record with Sacramento and only a half-game better than Cleveland (18-38)

* Phoenix Phactoid Pharaoh Vince Kozar’s Phun Phact o’ the Day: The Suns are 5-5 this season in games decided by three points or fewer after Tuesday night, the first such game since New York guard J.R. Smith’s buzzer-beater downed Phoenix on Dec. 26.

* The final word goes to Dragic: “When everybody is on the same page and playing hard on defense and on offense, we have more percent chance to win those kinds of games.”

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